You’ve probably told a whopper. Or a few. From the Washington Examiner, the White House can’t seem to get the Fast and Furious story straight:

And when Carney said that Obama’s decision to assert executive privilege over documents subpoenaed by Congress was “entirely about principle,” reporters openly laughed.

Whoops. The sad fact remains that most of the losers laughing will still vote for The Most Transparent Administration Evah.

This was after being twice corrected by Jake Tapper about the origins of Fast and Furious and the name of the Border Patrol agent killed as a result:

Next, Carney was forced to back off his attempt to pin Fast and Furious on the Bush Administration. “It originated in a field office during the previous administration. It was ended under this administration, by this Attorney General,” Carney said. ABC’s Jake Tapper quickly observed that “The operation began in fall 2009.”

[…]

As Carney continued to field questions, he appeared to forget the family name of border patrol agent Brian Terry, who was death ignited the investigation after he was killed by drug smugglers armed with weapons obtained through Operation Fast and Furious.

“We have provided Congress every document that pertains to the operation itself that is at issue here when you talk about the family that you referred to,” Carney said. When Tapper provided him the name, he repeated it — “the Terry family.”

Smartest people in the room, eh? What an embarrassing administration.

UPDATE: linked by Pundette as a “Recommended Read” AND in this fabulous post. Read it. Thanks!

Because there’s so much to say, and little time left to say it. Jed Babbin writes at American Spectator:

The focus of the leak problem should not only be the questions of who leaked the information and what role the president played in the disclosures. The focus has to be the assessment of how much damage — and what kinds of damage –the leaks did to our national security.

Babbin explains the circus of investigations and which inquiries would lead to x results. We don’t have time for the drawn out mess most would entail. But one thing remains certain: Mitt Romney can choose to make this a campaign issue–a central and necessary one at that–and hasn’t yet. Babbin:

It is up to Mitt Romney, as the leader of the Republican Party, to choose to make the Obama leaks a campaign issue.

So far, Romney has been silent on this and too many other issues. If he chooses to remain silent on the Obama leaks, he will surrender the issue leaving Obama to continue the leaking and gain whatever political advantage within reach. Instead, Romney could and should seize upon the issue. Romney should speak out quickly, joining in the bipartisan call for an investigation and asking the intelligence committees to hold the closed hearings to obtain the assessments of damage.

When — and if — the committees hold those hearings, Romney should use whatever they may disclose to make a major speech on the issue, calling the Obama administration to account for its actions against our nation’s security. It’s all up to Romney: he can be the leader of the Republican Party or sit silent, absorbing the damage to his campaign and ignoring the damage to our national security.

I’m waiting for the leader of the GOP to step up to the plate. Will he? Hell, even McCain is hopping mad over the leaks. Justifiably so.

At another point in the interview with Klein, Wright discussed the book he hoped to create. “What I was going to write on the Barack Obama thing was what it was like being the pastor of the one who ended up being the first African-descended president,” Wright told Klein. “Before the media mess, what was it like? And Martin said if you’re keeping notes about what happened, don’t publish that until after 2012, regardless of how the election goes. So I really put it aside. And every time I look at that box, with all those things in it — ”

When Klein asked more about the box, Wright revealed that in 2008 Eric Whitaker, a close friend of President Obama’s, offered him a substantial sum of money to stay quiet about his relationship with Obama until after the ’08 election.

“What’s in the box?” asked Klein.

“An email offering me money not to preach at all between the explosion of the media the first week in March [2008] and the November election,” answered Wright.

“An email from whom?” Klein asked.

“One of his friends.”

“Whitaker?” asked Klein.

“Yeah.”

“Eric?”

“Yeah.”

According to Klein, Whitaker’s offer, which was made through an intermediary at Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ, was $150,000. Wright declined. Wright also said that some time after he received Whitaker’s email, he spoke one-on-one with Obama, who did not offer him any money.

“I said, how am I supposed to support my family?” Wright said. “I have a daughter and a granddaughter in college whose tuitions I pay. I’ve got to earn money. He said, ‘Well, I really wish you wouldn’t. The press is gonna eat you alive.'”

“And that’s all he said? Just that?”

Oh, the compassion.

Whitaker declined to comment. Who wants to place bets he’ll conveniently disappear for a while?

Via Doug Ross who points out the vast majority of Obama’s haul in 2008 was collected from illegal sources:

So two-thirds of Obama’s record haul derives from a website that intentionally disabled all the default security checks that prevent basic fraud like fake addresses and no-name matches ….Here’s the bottom line: Two-thirds of the record-breaking haul Obama raised for the final stretch of the campaign comes from a racket set up to facilitate fake names, phony addresses and untraceable cards

The Bamster’s online donations this go-round have also disabled credit card security codes. Ho, hum, nothing to see here. The WaPo, which buried the stories in 2008 of Obama’s credit card scammery, can barely contain the indignation now:

An anonymous donor gave $10 million late last year to run ads attacking President Obama and Democratic policies, escalating the money race that is defining the 2012 presidential campaign. And in the new, free-wheeling environment of independent political giving, the identity of this donor, like many others, is likely to remain a permanent mystery.

The donation went to Crossroads GPS, the conservative nonprofit group founded with the support of political strategist Karl Rove. Another donor gave $10 million in the 2010 midterm elections, according to draft tax returns that provide the first detailed look at its finances.

[…]

The tax returns show that Crossroads GPS has collected the vast majority of its donations from the super-rich. The forms show that nearly 90 percent of its contributions through the end of 2011 had come from as few as two dozen donors, each giving $1 million or more. Overall, the nonprofit group raised more than $76 million since it was founded in May 2010 through the end of 2011.

“That’s certainly not a grass-roots movement,” said Bill Allison, editorial director of the Sunlight Foundation, which advocates for transparency in government and politics.“These donors can have a very disproportionate effect on politics, and the fact that we don’t know who they are and what kind of favors they will ask for is very troubling.”

Don’t want to hear it. No wonder the Obami were so concerned in the wake of the Citizens United decision: their knowing and willful violations of law didn’t matter in 2008, but the playing field has been leveled.

Mark Steyn waxes poetic on the lack of media concern for Fast and Furious. From The Daily Caller:

On Hugh Hewitt’s syndicated radio program Thursday, columnist Mark Steyn explained why he hasn’t ignored the story, and attacked the Obama administration’s involvement in the program.

“In this case the government of the United States is the gunrunner,” Steyn said. “That is basically what is happening here. There would be no guns running to these Mexican cartels if the United States government hadn’t instituted a program to facilitate it.”

Steyn noted the lack of media outrage compared with other scandals in the past.

“Now real Mexicans are dead,” he continued. “Does the president of the United States, does his attorney general, does CNN, does The New York Times, does NPR — do they not care about dead Mexicans?

“I mean, forget the United States Border Patrol guys that were killed about these ‘Fast & Furious’ guns. Real-live, or previously live, citizens of third world countries — the kind of people that NPR, The New York Times claim to love — are dead because of this.”

“Why isn’t that a national scandal?” he pleaded. “This is absolutely a — Iran-Contra didn’t rack of that kind of body count. Watergate didn’t rack up that kind of body count. Sarah Palin’s daughter’s boyfriend’s mother, or whatever stupid story they were chasing around Wasilla for months, that didn’t rack up a body count. There were hundreds of dead Mexicans from a gun running program run by the United States.”

When will the media have enough intellectual curiosity–or integrity–to ask the necessary questions of the Obama administration or of Eric Holder? Probably not. Holder has blood on his hands. Our Attorney General, already caught perjuring himself, knew of the gunrunning and never stopped it. I’ve read books with plotlines less crazy than this.

New documents obtained by CBS News show Attorney General Eric Holder was sent briefings on the controversial Fast and Furious operation as far back as July 2010. That directly contradicts his statement to Congress.

On May 3, 2011, Holder told a Judiciary Committee hearing, “I’m not sure of the exact date, but I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks.”

Dear Attorney General Holder, please note that testimony before Congress is recorded. You might not have been aware of the fact. So much for sworn testimony! Oh, maybe they didn’t teach you that in law school.

No code words or euphemisms there. Nice and specific. And yet Eric Holder, upon discovering that 1,500 guns had been “supplied” to Mexican drug cartels in an operation managed by the ATF, apparently didn’t demand a full explanation. Fancy that.

I’ve seen the “Holder lied, people died,” tag and it’s much more true of Holder than it ever was of Bush. Funny that, eh? Or the comparison to Watergate, except that Watergate didn’t have dead bodies strewn about.

Will this bring down Holder? Obama? It should on both counts. I’m still AWED that CBS pursues this story.